


Empty Tombs

by DaraOakwise



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU in light of The Husbands of River Song, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Library Fix-It, Mourning and getting on with it, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-07 07:58:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3167378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaraOakwise/pseuds/DaraOakwise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When River Song finally escaped the Library and started searching for the Doctor, she kept hearing one terrible word: Trenzalore, Trenzalore, Trenzalore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Library Fixed

When River Song finally escaped the Library and started searching for the Doctor, she kept hearing one terrible word: _Trenzalore, Trenzalore, Trenzalore._

Her escape had been no miracle, but the culmination of centuries of hard work. Early on, the Lux Corporation exterminated the Vashta Nerada and secured DNA samples for its trapped (dead) employees. Cal, using her extraordinary computing power, began analyzing the DNA line by line, with River's help. When the analysis was completed several centuries later, they began to run experiments -- could Cal materialize a hand? A foot? An eyeball? After some initial gooey mistakes, they perfected and refined the procedure.

When they were confident Cal was ready, River volunteered to be first. The Lux Corporation brought in carefully measured blocks of raw materials: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus; and traces of potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium. Cal saved the raw materials into her system, re-encoded them to River's DNA, merged them with River's saved mind, and rematerialized the new body.

River had gasped as oxygen flowed into her new lungs, as her synapses fired and muscles contracted. She lived! It was a resounding success. The Lux Corporation physicians were slightly baffled at the odd energy signatures within her body, but decided it was harmless. What River did not tell them was that Cal's skill was even more profound than they imagined: she had also managed to restore a full Time Lord regeneration cycle into River.

Both River and Anita decided to be resurrected. Evangelista, the Daves, and Cal herself declined. They loved Cal's world, and reasoned that the people they knew in the physical world were long dead. There was no hurry -- they could change their minds later. But Anita was eager for a new adventure, and River just wanted out.

The thing that concerned River was that her resurrection had been brought about entirely by human ingenuity. As far as she could tell, the Doctor wasn't behind any of it. Worry consumed her mind as she pushed through physical therapy, impatiently learning to sit and walk and eat again with a familiar body that had never actually moved before.

Once declared fit by the physicians (and after signing a confidentiality agreement about the Lux Corporation's new resurrection machine), she collected her few remaining things: her diary and sonic screwdriver, which the Doctor had hidden in the Library nine hundred years earlier, and her vortex manipulator, which she had stored in a bank vault paid for over the centuries by the Rory and Amelia Williams Foundation of 1957. With nothing else but her wits, she immediately began to make quiet inquiries through the universe--- _where is the Doctor?_

 _Dead_ , his enemies exulted. _Gone_ , his allies mourned. And one whispered word, over and over and over: _Trenzalore, Trenzalore, Trenzalore._

In desperation, she had listed their mutual friends in alphabetical order and started to contact each one, begging them to tell her that he'd seen her just one more time. _I'm so, so sorry_ , they would say. He'd gone to Trenzalore a widower, and perhaps embraced his death a little easier for it. It hurt too badly to keep hearing, and so she stopped asking before she reached "V: Madame Vastra."

It was fixed. She would never see him again.

Oh, River wept. She wept so bitterly, for she was too late. Before she chose to leave the Library, she knew this was a possibility. She well remembered saying goodbye to him at his tomb, his kiss lingering on her data-ghost lips. _See you around, Professor River Song_ , he'd lied. She had feared the possibility that he'd caught up with that tomb before she could escape the Library, but had hoped otherwise. Hoped in vain. And so she had curled up at the end of the universe and wept for herself, and her thirteen new lives without him. For him, and his tears at Darillium. For them, and all that they could have been. For the Tardis, the beautiful Tardis, which would have died with him.

Then, her tears spent, she dusted herself off and went to rebuild her life. Luna University was delighted to have her back. It was highly irregular, but they reasoned that a thousand year old professor (ha! if only they knew) was a tremendous addition to to archeology department. She taught eager young students, and was known as the best and most terrifying professor at the university. She collected first editions of her mother's books. Made sure she had a weekly chat with Cal through the Galactic Inter-Library Loan Link. Went on digs. Drank fine wine. Took creative lovers to her bed. Avenged the Doctor by hunting Daleks during university holidays.

She would miss him forever, but it was a good life, and she was glad to have it back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: "Oh, River," Anita said, puzzled. "This doesn't look like human blood."


	2. Chapter One: Time Lord Blood

River's most personal project was a book she planned to publish someday. Its working title was _In Memory of the the Doctor: an Oral History_. She'd been following rumors about him through space and time, and interviewing the people whose lives he'd touched. It was beautiful and painful and therapeutic.

She usually tried to classify which face they'd met, but it wasn't always easy. Some of the stories were a bit far from the source and clearly exaggerated: 'when my great-granddad met him, he was over two thousand years old!' or 'he breathed flames and the monsters ran away!' Those stories made her smile.

Some of the hardest-to-classify stories were most probably about his third face, from the way they described his dark coat and gray curls. It was strange, though--his third face hadn't traveled much. She always showed the interviewee pictures of the Doctor's faces. Usually they could pick it out right away, but sometimes they hesitated: 'I'm not sure it was any of those,' they'd say. She sometimes imagined the Doctor laughing at the imperfections of archeology. _This isn't science! You're just guessing!_ she could almost hear him say.

River was following his timeline when she and Anita arrived on Theron IV in the midst of its slavery era. It was, at the time, a brutal little world. It had the misfortune of being a rich source of several rare minerals necessary in 42nd Century space travel. It had been conquered by Earth, and its native population, called the V'Lak (who looked rather like large voles), were enslaved and pressed into hard labor in the mines. Earth would eventually be deeply ashamed by its actions, and a thousand years later would rebuild the world into a galactic wildlife preserve.  For now, though, it was a tortured planet. There was a rumor that the Doctor had been there several times before the Insurrection of 4197, and River hoped to collect those stories.

Unfortunately, the mere mention of his name was enough to get them surrounded by a dozen over-eager paramilitary types, arrested, and summarily stuffed into a dungeon at the bottom of the mine. Ordinarily, River would have been able to take a few cops without breaking a sweat, but it would have put a number of innocent V'Lak in danger.

"And that's how we got arrested on Theron IV," River said wryly to Anita as the door slammed shut behind them, as though she was telling the story at a dinner party to an appreciative crowd back home.

"Stay tuned to find out about our thrilling escape," Anita murmured, and then sighed. "I honestly don't know how I let you talk me in to these things, River." In truth, it usually didn't take much convincing for Anita to run away with her friend. Before the Library, Anita had been rather awed of the fearsome Professor Song. Nine hundred years in the computer together had made them friends. Their shared rebirth into a new millennium had forged them into sisters. She often accompanied River on digs and research trips, if for no other reason than to throw off the feeling of displacement and anachronism that sometimes plagued her. This was her first "Doctor Trip," however. River usually went on those when she was missing him the most, and always went alone, but this time had invited Anita on a whim.

"So, how are we going to escape?" Anita asked.

"No idea," River replied. "Let's look around our accommodations, and see if there is anything useful." The dungeon was a dank, dark hole carved out of the rock, but apparently also served as a rubbish bin when it wasn't holding prisoners. River quickly pocketed several sharp pointy things, some twine, a boot, and was digging through the next pile when she heard Anita.

"Uh oh," Anita called out, "we aren't alone." Anita was kneeling next to something -- someone, apparently -- in a dark corner of the dungeon.

"A V'Lak?" River asked.

"No, a human," Anita replied. "And he's hurt bad. God, that's a lot of blood."

"Is he alive?"

"I don't think so, he's ice cold ... no, wait. A heartbeat, but just barely. Oh, River," Anita said, puzzled. "This doesn't look like human blood."

River stopped her rummaging and made her way over to the unconscious form. Anita stepped aside so that the dim light slanting from the door fell across his body. River touched his chest and lifted her hands, her fingers wet with his blood ... and froze. Too dark, too orange.

"He's a Time Lord!" she gasped.

River talked herself down immediately. He couldn't be a Time Lord. There were no more Time Lords. His blood could not be orange; the light was just poor. She felt for his pulse. No, surely that was not a double pulse, but merely a bradycardiac, dying, rapidly cooling human heart. Not a Time Lord. She examined his face in the dim light. It was pained and worn, and completely unfamiliar. Not any of Doctor's faces. She wondered what he'd done to deserve death alone in this dungeon, and brushed his short gray hair back from his brow.

At her touch, his mind exploded into hers, all spinning stars and time. _He is a Time Lord_! River reeled backward with a wordless cry. It only took a second to collect herself, her face going still as stone. She grabbed his lapels and pried his mind out of its healing coma. His eyes flew open in pained confusion, and widened in shock as he focused on her face.

"River!" he gasped.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"River..." he whispered, begging.

"No, don't you 'River' me," she said, and slammed his shoulders and head into the ground. He groaned, and Anita reached out to restrain her. "Who are you? The Master? The Valeyard? And don't say 'the Doctor.' The Doctor is dead. He may have been called the eleventh Doctor, but he was on his thirteenth regeneration. He's dead."

"Are you .... you seriously quoting ... the rules to me?" he asked breathlessly, and reached up to cup her face. "If ... you really ... really don't know me ... then I can't help you."

River stared at him in wonder. She tucked her hands behind his head, her thumbs tracing the delicate telepathic nerves at his temples, and lowered her forehead to his. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, closing his fingers into her wild hair. "How are you alive?" she murmured, her throat closing as his mind hovered in the threshold of her own, accompanied, as always, by the symbiotic purr of the Tardis.

He cracked an eyelid, "River ... when are you?" he whispered in agony, starting to lose consciousness again.

"Shhh, rest," River gentled him, but then something urgent occurred to her, and she shook him carefully. "Wait, Doctor, are you traveling alone? Do you have a companion with you somewhere?"

".... alone ..." he said, and was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: "I'm post-Library, sweetie."


	3. Chapter Two: Memory

"Is it really him?" Anita asked quietly. River only nodded. It had been a very long time since Anita had seen River so badly shaken. River's hands trembled as she fumbled with the buttons of the Doctor's blood-soaked white shirt. Anita grabbed her hands for a moment and squeezed until River looked into her eyes. "Breathe," Anita whispered. River smiled tremulously, but her hands stopped shaking.

The Doctor was pierced through with two wounds, one in his left shoulder and one lower down in his left side. "Just bullets," River said in apparent relief, examining his wounds.

" 'Just?'" Anita asked, raising her eyebrows.

"His body can get him back on his feet after bullets in a few hours," River said, with the sure air of someone trying to reassure themselves. "A few days would be better, but a few hours is enough to get him up. Here, help me see if there are any exit wounds," she said, gathering him in her arms and raising him slightly so Anita could check his back.

"No exit wounds," Anita confirmed.

River grimaced. "That's not great. Probably expanding fragment rounds, for maximum damage, and shrapnel everywhere. His body will have to expel the metal, and it hurts like hell."

"Anything we can do for him?"Anita asked. River shook her head, and leaned back against the wall of their cell, pillowing his head in her lap. River closed her eyes, trying to hide her tears as she smoothed her fingers through his silver hair.

Anita examined his unconscious face in the dim light. He looked nothing like the man she'd met in the Library, but then, that had been so long ago. The Library was supposed to have been just another expedition. At the time, Anita had been River's graduate assistant, which meant they'd had their fair share of trouble, but they'd always handled it. Professor Song had always been utterly unflappable, until the Doctor arrived and had no idea who she was. River had tried to explain that he was a old friend who hadn't met her yet, but that bizarre pronouncement and the mystery of what could possibly spook River Song were quickly subsumed by the imminent (and ultimately realized) terror of being devoured alive.

During the centuries their minds had been stored together in the Library computer, however, they eventually told one another all of their stories, and River's were the best. She had told them how the Doctor they had met in the Library had died in pain, alone, and in terror of a final life without second chances. She showed them a drawing in her diary of the Doctor's next face, and told them how he rose from that regeneration at peace with it being his last. She told the story of the Girl who Waited and the Last Centurion. Of their daughter, Melody Pond, stolen away. The first time they all realized that baby Melody was actually River, Evangelista had asked ' _why didn't the Doctor save you!_ ' The answer was strange, but the curse of time travelers: ' _He couldn't save me because I'd already lived it, and he never did._ '

She told them about killing him and saving him (twice), and watching him die (twice), and rebooting the universe with him (twice). And about marrying him (many, many times). ' _He was your husband_?' Anita had gasped, and finally understood the haunted look in River's eyes when the Doctor did not know her. The tale of her front-to-back love affair with the Doctor never failed to break their hearts. Cal had been the one to say what they were thinking, after the first of many full tellings: ' _but River, that means that to him, you were always dead!_ ' That realization made each future telling of the story all the more bittersweet.

Most days in the Library were the same, if they could be called days. Time passed, and Cal gave them a world with patterns and rhythms, with interesting things to read and talk about. But one panicked day, River utterly disappeared from the Library for a few hours, and when she reappeared, she didn't speak for days. When she did, it was a terrible tale about visiting the Doctor's tomb, and an evil intelligence trying to rewrite his life. River had always worried for him, and seeing him in on the threshold of his grave did nothing to assuage her fears. After that, River had redoubled their efforts to escape.

Anita knew the Doctor's story as well as anyone, and so when River showed up on her doorstep two years after their resurrection, with only the word _Trenzalore_ on her lips, Anita wept with her dear friend.

Like River, Anita worked hard to rebuild her life. Luna University was happy to bestow her long-deferred doctorate and hire her into its archeology department. Where River blazed her way across their new landscape, Anita was content to live more quietly. After nine centuries of pure intellectualism, she enjoyed the feeling of the sun on her back and dirt under her fingernails. She'd spent most the last four years on Theron IV on a dig examining the lives and deaths of the once-enslaved V'Lak.

River had appeared out of the blue five days ago (and two millennia from now) with some old wine, welcome supplies, and an invitation to travel back in time and meet the V'Lak slaves. From a scientific perspective, it was cheating, but irresistible, particularly with the added fascination of hearing new stories about the Doctor. She hadn't know what to expect, but finding the man himself, bleeding on the floor of what would become her excavation site, was certainly not it.

Anita made another round of their cell, then settled in beside her friend. She lightly bumped River's shoulder. "All right?" She asked, tucking a not-entirely-filthy scrap of fabric around River's shoulders like a shawl. The Doctor's body was ice cold in River's lap, and Anita could see River shaking. Whether from the cold or from emotion, Anita couldn't say, but she figured a blanket might help either way

"I honestly don't know," River answered, smiling gratefully. "Sorry I got you into another mess."

"There is no one else I'd rather be trapped with," Anita said wryly, and River snorted. "It's really him?" Anita asked again in wonder, gesturing at the unconscious Time Lord. "A later him? Isn't that impossible?"

"He has always been impossible," River said fondly, with a shrug that was not nearly as nonchalant as she pretended it to be. River winced as fresh blood welled up on the Doctor's shoulder, and brushed away a fragment of bullet which had worked up through his muscle and skin.

"That is a little strange," Anita confessed, shivering.

"A human body would just encapsulate metal fragments and get on with life." River said, her voice taking on the slightest timbre of 'professor mode.' "In a Time Lord, that is very dangerous. Non-organic contaminants during regeneration might get written into the new DNA, and that isn't the fun kind of mutation. So Time Lord bodies do everything they can to quickly flush out foreign contamination."

"You've been through it?" Anita asked. Anita was one of a few beings in the universe aware of River's 'human plus' genetic code.

River smiled, a little grimly, the lecturer melting away. "Let's just say he's picked his share of bullets out of me."

"He should be up in few hours, you said?" Anita asked.

"A few hours," River confirmed, flicking away more metal.

"I suppose we'll get our answers then," Anita said, closing her eyes and settling in for a bit of sleep.

"I suppose we will," River murmured, closing her eyes as well. With the slow beat of her husband's hearts under her hands for the first time in almost a thousand years, her mind drifted to the last time she had indulged in the memory of him as her husband, rather than her research project. Every year following her resurrection, Tolman Lux had made sure that River attended his annual holiday party, the premier who's-who bash of the season. ' _Ah, River,_ ' he'd told her last Christmas, snagging a fresh flute of champagne for her, ' _you are, as always, radiant_.'

' _Oh, Tolman_ ,' she'd chuckled, ' _you say that to all of your guests.'_

' _No, truly_ ,' he had protested, ' _there isn't a gynasexual sapien-compatible being in this room who isn't dying to sweep you off your feet_.'

' _Ah, is that why you invite me every year_?' she'd teased. ' _To entice your friends?'_

' _Rather the other way around,_ ' he had pouted. ' _Come now, River, this room is full of the most beautiful and fascinating beings in the universe. Don't any of them interest you?'_

' _Don't you worry_ ,' she fibbed wickedly, ' _I've slept with my fair share of them.'_

Lux had sighed. ' _That isn't remotely what I'm talking about.'_

_'I know_ ,' she'd said gently.

' _I want you to be happy_ ,' Lux had said expansively. It was both an endearing and obnoxious quality in the generations of Luxes she had known--a bit of _noblesse_ _oblige_ they always had toward anyone they had ever been responsible for. He could be an arrogant prat, but Tolman Lux had been there when she took her first post-Library breath. ' _I want you to be rapturously in love with someone who fits your wild soul._ ' He had continued. _'I have a list for you, you know. I make a list of potential candidates for you every year and invite them to my party. And they all fall in love with you instantly, and you pretend not to notice.'_

' _You are an old sap,_ ' River had laughed, gazing at him over the top of her drink. ' _I am happy. I'm just not the settling-down sort.'_

' _Ah_ ,' Lux had said, lifting his glass. ' _But I know that isn't true. Before the Library, you were married.'_

The smile had faded from River's face. ' _Almost no one in the universe knows that_ ," she'd said. " _How did you find that out?_ '

_'I own the biggest Library ever created,_ ' he'd shrugged. ' _I looked you up_.'

River had smiled ruefully. ' _If you cross-referenced my husband, you'd see that just because I was married doesn't mean I ever settled down. The Doctor was many, many things, but 'settled' was not one of them.'_

River had looked around Lux's glittering ballroom, and the gleaming guests in their white bow ties and shimmering gowns. The Doctor would have danced her around a room like this, exulting in the jealous glances of the other guests. _They are all looking at you, my dear_ , he would have whispered into her ear. _Or you,_ she would have replied, _since you are the most extraordinary person in the room_. He would have frowned at that, then smiled. _We are extraordinary_ , he would have declared.

She had shaken herself then, and caught Lux's arm. _Enough_ , she'd chided herself, then smiled at Lux: ' _Now, introduce me to some of these people you have on your list!_ '

The slow rise of the Doctor's body temperature from its icy depths woke River from her light doze. A bit more light was shining through the door of their cell; it was apparently the day shift in the mine. Her chest gave a tight squeeze as he shifted in her lap. He took a deep breath, which caught softly in his throat as his pain broke through the haze.

"Easy," she murmured, holding his left shoulder in place so he didn't aggravate the still-healing wounds.

"Clara?" he asked weakly, scrubbing his right hand over his face.

The question knifed through River. "No," she murmured softly. "Not Clara." 

"Right," he muttered darkly. "Of course not Clara." He focused on River's face by degrees, his look of puzzlement shifting to one of wonder. "You _are_ here. I thought I'd dreamt you."

"Hello sweetie" River said lightly.

"Hello," he replied, almost shyly. His voice was deeper, she noted absently, baritone where the last two had been tenors. Any remaining glimmer of doubt she'd had about his identity melted away as she held his gaze. The color of his eyes was hard to tell in the slanting light -- gray, or ocean blue, she thought -- but they were unmistakably his, despite the heavier weight of pain and years behind them.

"You've regenerated," she said, a little accusatory.

"What?" he cried, his hand flying up to feel his face. "No I haven't," he said in relief.

"You have since the last time I saw you," River clarified.

"Oh. Right. Yes," he said. "That's been a while ago now. Long story. You had me worried there. I've found I rather like this body. A bit more gravitas. It's the eyebrows, you see. Makes people more inclined to listen." He grimaced as River poked at his wounds. She wasn't quite sure if he was flinching at the pain, or at being touched in general.

"I'm not sure I like it," she said grumpily.

"You don't?"

"Lots of blood and extra holes."

He smirked, his disappointment at her first answer vanishing. "Well, sometimes even this face can't quite talk sense into people. Especially during the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Humans are more pudding brained than usual during this era, conquering planets and enslaving species like the V'Lak and the Ood. It takes a lot more work to remind humans of their ... humanity. They like to shoot first, and ask questions never."

"I like the face. And I'm very, very glad to see it, especially since it is impossible," River said quietly, touching his cheek before returning to her examination of his shoulder and side. She frowned at him when he flinched away again. "This isn't healed very well yet. You should go back to sleep."

He pushed himself to sitting with his good arm, paling a bit at the effort. "No time. It'll do," he said.

At his movement, Anita stirred beside them. "Oh, hello," she said blearily. "Feeling better?"

The Doctor's eyebrows rose imperceptibly as he recognize Anita's face and voice. He rewound the memory, and remembered darkening Anita's helmet visor to try to slow the Vashta Nerada. ' _No one is ever going to see my face again_ ,' she'd mourned, correctly. The Vashta Nerada devoured her flesh and stole her voice, and he'd _raged_ at them: ' _You know what? I really liked Anita. She was brave, even when she was crying. And she never gave in. And you ate her. You just killed someone I liked. That is not a safe place to stand._ '

River watched the memory hit him, and his face still as he shoved it away. Even on this new face, she recognized the look. It was one she'd seen hundreds of times, and never understood, until now. It was him re-living her death, and bearing it alone. She also knew the incorrect conclusion he'd just drawn from seeing Anita's face: that they were only weeks or days from embarking on the Library expedition. He'd been mourning her death from the day he met her, and she wouldn't let that stand another minute.

She reached out, but then withdrew her hand, thinking better of it until she could figure out his new body. "We're post-Library, sweetie," she said softly.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: "You know, I robbed a bank a little while back," the Doctor said. "Most secure bank in the universe. Unbreakable atomic seals on the vault, plus a telepath who could track guilt and melt your brain when he caught you. Got past it all, piece of cake." 
> 
> River glared up at him as she contorted her arm around the corner to reach the lock. "If you're so good, how would you like to get this door open?"


	4. Chapter 3: Escapes

A look River couldn't classify flashed across the Doctor's new unfamiliar face. "Post-Library," he said flatly. Then, a look of almost-hope, as if he couldn't quite believe the implications of what she'd said, and expected the universe to take it away from him. "Post-Library?"

"Post-Library," she confirmed, a little amused.

"The Library. Biggest in the universe. Filled with Vashta Nerada. Where you ..." he choked on the secret he'd never been able to tell her.

"...died, yes, the first time you ever met me," River continued for him, matter of factly.

The hope on his face changed to wonder. "And you are really, properly here? Not a data ghost or a telepathic projection or a dream?" he whispered.

"I'm really, properly here."

"How?"

"It isn't unprecedented, the technology to weave a new body for a living mind stored in a massive hard drive," River answered. "The Time Lords could do it."

The Doctor laughed with delight. "Yes, they could. This is what you did with eternity? Built a Time Lord body loom?"

River shrugged. "Close enough. Cal was able to save bodies and restore them a hundred years later. Rewriting new bodies was just the next step, and Cal is very clever. Only took us 900 years to figure it out."

The smile faded from the Doctor's face. "I trapped you in the Library for 900 years?" he asked, his voice suddenly weary. He slumped back against the wall of their cell, the joy that had animated him flowing away. "That's fitting."

"900 years in which you never visited," River said pointedly.

"Yes, well," the Doctor said, passing his good hand over his face, "not very long after Darillium, I managed to get myself stuck somewhere for 900 years too."

River took his hand and laced her fingers in his. "I never should have told you about Darillium," she said. "It only occurred to me much later that I'd cursed you forever with the dread of our last night." She remembered how he had shouted at her so long ago, loudly and uncharacteristically, when she had casually mentioned her upcoming Lux expedition. She'd shouted back, and told him he could bloody well stay away until he could come up with an excellent apology. The night at Darillium, so long promised, had been his peace offering. She hadn't understood his tears until it was too late.

The Doctor looked at their joined hands, her familiar fingers a fresh sight when intertwined with his new ones. "You told me about Darillium because you always had," he sighed. "How long ago did you escape?"

"About ten years ago," she said quietly. At his sharp look, she continued: "I looked for you, you know. But every timeline led to ..."

"Trenzalore," he sighed tiredly, and squeezed her hand. "You thought I was dead."

"It was your tomb," she said quietly. "I'd seen it. Which, frankly, makes your continued presence in the universe even more impossible than mine."

"Not impossible," he replied. "Just unlikely."

"What happened, to earlier you? How did you die?" she asked, mourning a bit for the face she'd fallen in love with.

"Old age, if you can believe that," he answered ruefully. "That young body died of old age. Well, old age and Daleks. I've never been that ancient before, not even when my original body died. This body looks a bit further down the line, but believe me, it is a huge improvement."

"How long since you regenerated?"

He scratched his head. "Don't know, exactly. Couple of decades, something like that."

"And, how? How did you come up with a new regeneration cycle?"

"How did you come up with one?" he asked pointedly. 

"You can feel that, can you?" she asked. "The blueprint for a regeneration cycle was in my DNA. Cal just followed the recipe. And you haven't answered my question."

He gave her a stiff half shrug. "It's a long story. But first we need to get out of here. The military Governor of Theron IV is a thug. I got shot up by a couple of his under-thuglings, on suspicion of being an abolitionist, and I assume you did something equally subversive to end up in this cell. They'll send someone to interrogate us in the morning, and I'd rather not be here."

"He's right," Anita said. She'd wandered to the other side of the cell to give River and her husband a few moments of privacy. "I can hear the day coming to life out there. And the military junta that ruled Theron IV during this era was not know for its mercy. We've found more than a few nasty things during our dig."

"Archeologists," the Doctor snorted. "When is your dig? About 2000 years from now, I'd guess?"

"Exactly," Anita said. "We're being funded by Earth's Theron IV Reparations Committee. At least Earth eventually comes to its senses."

"Humans have never been totally sane," the Doctor said, flashing her a wolffish smile. "One of my favorite things about humans. But mad and cruel has never been a good combination." He shifted as though to stand, then thought better of it. "Oh, and Anita, it is good to see your face," he said gently.

"I'm glad to have one," she answered, a bit surprised that he remembered her.

"It's little consolation, but I throughly told off the Vashta Nerada after they ate you. Which honestly sounds even less impressive than I thought, now that I've said it out loud," the Doctor sighed.

Both River and Anita laughed. "It does mean something," Anita replied. "You were just a kind stranger when I died, but after 900 years in the Library with River, I've heard a few stories about you. It means something that you tried to save me."

"A few stories?" the Doctor asked, looking pointedly at his wife.

"Just a few," River said, teasing. "And stop trying to get up," she continued, her voice sharpening. "You're not going to make it on your own."

He lifted a hand in surrender. River knelt beside him and reached to put her arm around his waist. She frowned as he flinched away. "Okay, what is that?" she asked softly, rocking back to her heels.

He gave her an apologetic look. "This is a good body. Strong. Fast. Reasonably graceful. Grown-up tastes. It also has a problem with touch." He shrugged. "I haven't worked it out yet. Didn't have a reason to work it out. Don't worry about it," he said, waving her nearer.

He put his hand around the back of her neck as she set her left shoulder securely under his arm, snaking her hand around his back and and side. She found a place for it against his ribs, careful to avoid the nearly-healed wound in his side, and steadied him with her other hand on his bare chest, his shirt still open from when she had unbuttoned it to examine the damage. Anita hovered nearby, ready to offer emergency support. "One, two, three," River murmured, pulling him solidly toward her hip as she levered him to his feet. "Okay?" she said, tightening her grip around him as he staggered slightly.

"Okay," he breathed, straightening off of her support. She released him cautiously and stepped away. He put a hand on the wall of the cell and took a steadying breath, then stood upright. He glanced down at his body, and grimaced as he reached to close the buttons of his blood-stiff shirt.

"Here, let me," she said, stepping into his personal space again. He dropped his hands and looked down at her, his gaze soft and rueful. She focused on her task with more deliberation than it required. "I think the shirt is a lost cause, but the coat is still fine," she said. She pulled his dark coat closed and buttoned it to the top, hiding the blood beneath, and then fussed with the collar, looking everywhere but his eyes. She reached out to smooth her hands down his chest, then paused, her fingers hovering over him.

"River," he said softly. Her breath caught in her throat somewhere between a sob and a laugh. Standing next to him for the first time in nearly a thousand years brought an unexpected well of tears. She could feel his eyes on her as she composed herself. She lifted her gaze to his, and gave him a fractured smile. He took her hand in his and brought it to his lips, excusing her from speaking aloud the words that were piling up around the ache in her chest.

A bang in the hallway brought them back to the present. "I don't suppose you have your sonic screwdriver?" River asked.

"No, they took it," he said, patting at his pockets. He grimaced again, the movement pulling. River sighed and shoved her hand into one of the bigger-on-the-inside pockets of his coat. The thugs who'd shot the Doctor had apparently not searched him well. Or thought he was too far gone for it to matter.

"A banana, of course," she muttered. "String...nope, that's a yo-yo." She frowned as she pulled out a half-carved wooden mining car, a homemade V'Lak doll, and a child's drawing of a figure that was obviously the Doctor. "Since when do you make toys?" River asked, a little bemused.

"Since 900 years on Trenzalore," he answered defensively, stiffly tucking the toys and drawing back in his coat.

"So you actually went to Trenzalore?" River asked. "That's where you were stuck for 900 years? Stuck...making toys?"

The Doctor sighed. "That, and fighting a hopeless battle with every enemy I'd ever made."

"River," Anita called, from where she'd been examining the door. "I honestly think this may be a basic tumbler lock, but I can't quite reach it."

River walked across the room and stuck her arm though the bars, feeling blindly at the mechanism. "It is!" she said in surprise. She dug through the trash heap in the center of the room until she found an acceptable bit of wire. "It's like they don't even want this to be hard!"

"You know, I robbed a bank a little while back," the Doctor said, moving across the room. "Most secure bank in the universe. Unbreakable atomic seals on the vault, plus a telepath who could track guilt and melt your brain when he caught you. Got past it all, piece of cake."

River glared up at him as she contorted her arm around the corner to reach the lock. He was leaning heavily again the wall beside her, his right arm crossed over his body to support his left arm and take the pressure off his shoulder and side. "If you're so good, how would you like to get this door open?" River said shortly.

"No, you're doing fine," he said, breath hitching.

River glanced at him in concern. "What did you steal?" she asked, working the tumblers of the lock, her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth as she concentrated.

"Hmm?"

"The bank. What did you steal?" she repeated, sensing that she needed to distract him from the pain to keep him on his feet.

"Oh, right," the Doctor said. "The brain-melting telepath and his mate. Last two of a species, imprisoned and enslaved by the bank. Really gorgeous couple, eyestalks out to here, ten inch claws. We got them out and dropped them off on a quiet little world of their own."

River smiled and shook her head. "Only you would break into the most secure bank in the universe to free a couple of monsters."

"Not monsters," he said with a frown.

"Figure of speech. Ah!" she said triumphantly, and the door swung open with a click. "You have that face on again, sweetie," she said coyly.

"The 'my-wife-is-amazing' face?'"

"The very same. It's a good look on you." Her smile faded as she looked at him. "Seriously. Honestly. Are you good to go? Because you still look shaky on your feet, and I don't know what's out there."

"I'm stiff, bruised, and probably have broken ribs," he admitted. "But I'm done bleeding, and getting stronger by the minute. I'd rather take my chances out there."

River reached out for his hand. "Run?" she asked.

He closed his fingers around hers, and beamed at her. "Run," he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: 
> 
> "What you need to understand," the Doctor said, "is that during the Time War I really, actually, fully destroyed Gallifrey."
> 
> River looked at him, completely nonplussed. "Yes, I know."
> 
> "And then ... I changed my mind, and de-destroyed it. Undestroyed it." He paused. "Saved it," he said quietly.


	5. Chapter 4: Home

The lone guard of the prison had been too shocked to react when his three prisoners -- including the one who was supposed to be dead by now -- came charging around the corner. River quickly incapacitated him. Anita stuffed him into their recently-vacated cell while River collected her vortex manipulator and gun. The Doctor just shook his head at the sight of the weapon.

"Here, screwdriver boy," River said, chucking the sonic at his head. He easily caught it with his good hand and shoved it into a pocket.

The trio crept down the stone hallway, moving toward the slave quarters. The prison gave way to dingy tents and curtained-off alcoves where the V'Lak were forced to live. The tents gave them better cover, but their pace slowed significantly because they kept getting stopped by big-eyed children who tugged on the Doctor's trousers and coat. "Lord Doctor," they whispered, "Master Doctor." He passed out small toys and books to them as he went, sometimes even sitting down with a nest of fuzzy children to whisper stories to them.

"Where are their parents?" Anita asked, helping the Doctor to his feet as he murmured goodbyes to another group. River caught his elbow as he staggered slightly, clearly wearied. She shot him a worried look.

"Working in the mine," the Doctor answered Anita. "There isn't even a school here. The parents have no choice; the children get left behind in the tents, cared for by older siblings or cousins until they are twelve, and old enough to work in the mine themselves ... Wait!" the Doctor grabbed his companions' shoulders, freezing them in place behind a curtain.

A sudden shout of angry words echoed down the hallway, and they carefully peered out. Several of the Governor's ruffians had chased down three V'Lak children to a dead-end. River couldn't hear what they were saying, but the humans' voices were cruel, and the children's were afraid.

The Doctor's face was thunderous. "Anita, do you know the lifts to the third level?" he whispered.

"I do," the archeologist answered.

"The Tardis is on the third floor, in the oldest section of the mine, where the V'Lak run a quiet black market," the Doctor said. Anita beamed at the news about a black market, and made a mental note to start a new excavation there when she got back to her dig. "Go get the Tardis," the Doctor said, turning his gaze onto River.

"And what are you going to do?" River hissed.

"Do you see the tall child, standing between the guards and the other children? That is Om'l Matayal, future leader of the resistance, and my friend," the Doctor said. "And I'm going to stop this." He checked his coat to ensure that his bloodied shoulder and side weren't visible, tucked his hands into his pockets, and stepped nonchalantly into the hall.

"I think you're looking for me," the Doctor called to the ruffians. "Unless of course you only bully people smaller than you." The ruffians whirled around, and the children took advantage of the distraction to scatter into hidden paths and corners.

"You!" the leader of the ruffians cried. "I thought I already killed you." He gestured to his henchmen, who grabbed the Doctor's arms. The Doctor winced, and the head ruffian jerked him forward by his coat, smirking when he saw the blood-soaked shirt beneath. "I knew I shot you. You must have body mods to be walking around so soon, but it still looks like it hurts," he said, before driving his fist into the Doctor's side. The blow took the injured Time Lord off his feet, and he slumped wordlessly in the arms of his captors. "Abolitionist," the ruffian hissed, hitting him again. "You're going to the Governor for interrogation, and then I'll kill you properly, if the Governor doesn't finish you off first."

Om'l Matayal, who had paused near where River and Anita were hiding, snarled quietly and moved as though to rush in to the Doctor's defense. River grabbed him and pulled him behind the curtain, holding his snout shut. He struggled against her for a moment until she let him go and put a finger to her lips. Anita stared at the boy, who would be become the hero of his people and the subject of much of her own research.

"Are you friends of Master Doctor?" Matayal whispered, his eyes darting between the two women.

"We are," River murmured. "Although I'm quite sure he's told you leave out the 'Master' part." The boy bowed his head, then looked up fiercely.

"We must help him," Matayal said urgently.

"We will," River soothed, "but in our own way. Tell me, do you know where he keeps his big blue box?"

"The Tardis? Follow me, and stay low," he said, darting away. He scouted ahead, whiskers twitching as he checked around corners and up ladders before gesturing them to follow.

River had an excellent sense of direction, but was thoroughly lost in the twisting tunnels until suddenly, there, tucked into an alcove, was the Tardis. River swallowed heavily and blinked the tears from her eyes. River had mourned the last of the Time Ships almost as much as the last of the Time Lords, for they were so intertwined in each other's minds that the death of the Doctor would have meant the death of the Tardis. Yet here she stood, warm under River's hands, her eleven-dimensional mind reaching out to her child in ecstasy. "Mother," River said quietly, her palm flat on the smooth blue wood of the door, "please let me in." River gasped with joy as the door sprung open, and she stepped into the Tardis for the first time since the Singing Towers, Anita and Matayal close behind her.

"Wow," Anita murmured, turning a circle in the middle of the room. Matayal, who had apparently been there before, galloped up the stairs to the bookcases like a parched man to water.

"I love this place," the boy said, three books already in his hands.

River agreed with the sentiment, although the console room was much changed from the steampunk theme she remembered. River ran her hands appreciatively over the knobs and levers of the console. "You look very sleek," she murmured to the Tardis. "Although he's apparently left whimsy behind entirely." The Tardis gave a long-suffering wheeze. River patted the Tardis. "We need to get to him, dear, right now," she murmured to the ancient time machine. River flipped the dematerialization circuit, and looked up as the time rotors moaned above her head. "Oh, my," she whispered in awe as she read the turning Gallifreyan script. "Did you come up with that, or did he?" The Tardis sighed proudly, and boomed to a halt.

"Stay here," River commanded Anita and Matayal, then threw the door open and stepped into the Governor's office, her gun drawn and pointed directly at the Governor's head.

"What kind of time do you call this?" the Doctor called out, grimacing and arching backward in agony as the guards holding him twisted his arms behind him, torquing the Doctor's injured shoulder.

"I call this 'just in time,' sweetie," River said. "Let him go, now," River said to the guards, "or the Governor dies." 

"You're bluffing," the Governor snarled.

"Anita," River called over his shoulder into the Tardis, whose doors were still open, exposing her bigger-in-the-inside interior to the slavers. The Tardis was vibrating threateningly. "You have the the vaporization guns aimed at these puny humans, don't you?"

"Right, of course," Anita called from within. "Locked on and charged."

River sashayed into the office. "Do you know who he is?" River said, glaring at the Governor. Her gun didn't waiver. "He is the Doctor. He's been Earth's champion, and the universe's, for years uncounted."

"I know who he is," the Governor growled. "Torchwood has warned us that he might try to interfere here." The Doctor snorted at that.

"You have no idea who you are dealing with" River said flatly. "I've seen whole armies run away at the sound of his name. He needs no weapons -- his words shake the universe, and are these: Hope, Freedom, and Justice. He lifts the fallen, frees the slave, and succors the weak. He walks in eternity, and if he is your enemy, you can rest assured: you are on the wrong side of history. And I'm his wife, and I _do_ carry a gun. So please go on," she said, cocking her weapon, "and tell me how I'm bluffing.

"Let him go," the Governor said urgently to his henchman. They paused, then shoved the Doctor away. The Doctor caught his balance, then rolled his shoulders and dusted off his jacket. He turned his back on the Governor and the guards, unbothered by their bristling hostility, and walked to the Tardis. River gave a jaunty salute to the room at large and covered their retreat. "Why are you here?" the Governor growled at him, just before the Doctor stepped into the Tardis. "Go ahead, run away in your ship. Whatever you hoped to accomplish, you've failed."

"Ah, Governor," the Doctor said over his shoulder. "I'm not here for you. I can't do anything for you; history has already judged your failure here. And I've accomplished everything I came to do. Coming, dear?" he asked River, standing aside as she brushed by him, then closing the door behind them. River caught him as he slumped against the inside of the door.

"'Vaporization guns,' really, River?" he quoted incredulously.

"A fine bit of improv there Anita," River called to her friend. "Thanks for following along."

"Hmm, I was wondering if any of these switches were actually vaporization guns," Anita said with a laugh.

The Doctor grumbled something about "girls with guns," then grimaced and struggled upright, shaking off River's hands and heading toward the console. He flipped a switch, putting them in the time vortex. "Nice speech, by the way," he told River.

"I meant every word," River said softly.

"Lord Doctor!" Matayal cried from the second level.

"It's just 'Doctor,' Matayal," the Doctor said, with amused exasperation. "Tagged along did you? Good. Come down here." The young V'Lak hopped over the railing of the library, bouncing lightly when he hit the floor of the main level. "You make me tired just looking at you," the Doctor sighed. "Come here, the Ood asked me to give something to you." The Doctor placed his hand on Matayal's head, and the V'Lak lit up with wonder. "It's called 'The Song of Freedom,'" the Doctor said.

"Telepathic recording," River murmured at Anita's confused look.

A moment later the Doctor lifted his hand. "Go pick out some books, and there is a sack of jelly babies up there somewhere, then off you go," The boy bounced around the room, collecting his books and candies, then paused at the door and bowed.

"Thank you for the song," he whispered.

"Take care of everyone," the Doctor told him, turning off the parking brake and slipping the Tardis soundlessly into the alcove.

"I will," Matayal said fiercely before bounding away.

"Om'l Matayal," Anita murmured in wonder as the door shut behind him. "The legend himself, at ten years old. I still think time travel is cheating, but my God, that is a thrill."

"He's even more impressive in ten years, but he's quite a fireball even now," the Doctor said, leaning heavily on the console. He scrubbed his face and hair with his good hand, then groaned as he levered himself upright. "You drive," the Doctor told River, turning away to walk deeper into the ship. "I don't care where. I need a wash and some tea." He vanished around the corner.

"How about Theron IV, about 2000 years from now?" Anita suggested to River.

"Home it is," River confirmed. When they arrived a moment later, Anita opened the door, and the sounds of her archeological dig drifted in. Outside, slaves no more, the V'Lak scientists were busy peeling back the layers of their history.

"You know," Anita said, pausing on the threshold. "I'm fairly certain that we've found some of the Doctor's toys and books during the dig. Do you think he'll want them back?"

River laughed. "Probably not."

Anita kissed River's cheek, and grabbed her shoulders. "Call me," she whispered.

"I will," River promised. "Thank you for everything, my friend." The door swung shut behind Anita, leaving River alone. River thought for a minute, then put the ship into flight again. She trailed her finger across the console as they came to a halt and went to find the Doctor, trusting the Tardis to show her where he was.

The Tardis led her first to the infirmary and a vial of conspicuously placed Gallifreyan painkillers, then to the kitchen, where there was tea steaming in a time-looped mug to keep it warm. Finally, the Tardis brought her to a very familiar door. River took a deep breath and walked into the bedroom she hadn't seen in 900 years. Unsurprisingly, he'd redecorated here too. It was dark and spartan, all black and silver and mahogany. It was clear that he spent far more time in the console room than in here. Nothing here was hers -- and yet, as she turned a circle in the room, she felt it shifting behind her, and when she turned back, it had subtly changed: the bed remade, with a white duvet and an extra pillow; a reading chair and lamp added in a corner; his worn blue diary fetched from somewhere and centered on his bedside table; and a matching table added to her side of the bed, with a single red rosebud balanced in a delicate silver vase. River patted the wall affectionately. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves, dear," she murmured to the ship.

A trail of clothing was strewn across the room: one boot, and then then other, both socks, his crimson-lined jacket, trousers, and the ruined white shirt. She collected them all and stuffed them into the Tardis laundry chute. She paused outside the bathroom door. There was a time when she simply would have walked in on him. She probably still could, and he'd just smile at her ... but no, it was too much, today. She left the medicine and tea on his table, with a note: _The Tardis wants you to drink this. Find me when you're ready. I'll be outside. R_.

River padded back down the hall, through the console room, out the door, and into the front room of her own cosy house on Luna. Her heart swelled with sudden emotion at the sight of Tardis -- _the Tardis!_ \-- parked here. River threw her arms around the old police box and gave it a kiss. From within the open doors, the Tardis burbled happily.

After the grime of the mine and the dungeon, River needed a shower too. She unstrapped her vortex manipulator from her wrist and her gun from her side, then peeled off her filthy clothes and turned up the temperature in the shower as hot as she could stand. She stood in the stream for a few moments, then slid to floor and let the hot water pour over her head and shoulders. She was unsurprised to feel herself shaking, and gave into her tumbling emotions -- elation mixed with grief, fear standing beside hope. He was _alive_ , and she had no idea what that meant, so she permitted the tears.

When she emerged an hour later, much cleaner and far more composed, the Doctor was sprawled across her couch, napping. He was still slightly damp himself, and wearing both a jumper and a hoodie under his freshly-laundered coat. River shook her head. His fashion sense was more subdued with this body, but still odd. He stirred as she walked into the room.

"Back to Luna University, I see," he said.

She smiled. "As it happens, I am an excellent professor," she said.

"I know you are. Oh, did you know that the Moon is actually an egg?"

"Of course," River answered. "That was one of the reasons Luna University was built, to monitor the fetus. It is still very early days, only about 4000 years old, but we've already learned a lot from her. She's dimensionally transcendental, which is how her mother was able to increase her mass just before she hatched out of the old Moon."

The Doctor sat up, still moving a bit stiffly. "I was there when the first one hatched, you know. Sublime."

"I've always wanted to see that," River admitted, "but the timeline was strange. Gray and fluctuating, like the moment was still undecided. I was worried about interfering."

"It's decided now, nice and fixed," the Doctor answered ruefully.

"There's a story there, isn't there ....?" River probed.

"Yes, there is," the Doctor answered, but did not volunteer more.

River shrugged, letting it go, and walked over to her liquor cabinet. "More 'grown up tastes,' this time around, I think you said?" River asked, holding up a bottle of scotch. He nodded and held up two fingers; she obliged, and wordlessly handed him the tumbler. She poured a glass of wine for herself, and settled into the settee across from him. He took a sip of his drink, then tilted his head at her and gave a significant glance at the empty space beside him on the couch.

"I didn't want to presume," she said softly.

"I suppose I shouldn't either," he said with a sigh, rolling his head to rest it on the back of the couch. "I certainly wouldn't hold it against you if you've found someone to share your life with."

"I won't tell you that my bed has been empty every night," she admitted. "But 'someone to share my life with?' No. As it happens, I'm still not over my husband." She got up and settled next to him, laying her head on his shoulder. He twitched. "Sorry," she apologized, scooting away. "I forgot, no touching."

He sighed in exasperation, and set his drink down on the coffee table before scrubbing his hands through his hair in frustration. He sighed again, then twisted his body and put his head in her lap. She hesitantly threaded her fingers through his hair, and he forced himself to be still. "It's this new regeneration cycle," he confessed. "It's not quite natural. I think there is a chance I might just keep on regenerating forever, so I don't accidentally die for good before I can do what needs to get done. But it burns, and I think that it might be intentional."

"I think you'd better tell me whatever it is that you have been avoiding telling me," River said softly.

He paused, collecting his thoughts, then began to speak. "The first thing you need to understand is that during the Time War I really, actually, fully destroyed Gallifrey."

River looked down at him, completely nonplussed. "Yes, I know."

"And then ... I changed my mind, and de-destroyed it. Un-destroyed it." He swallowed. "Saved it," he said quietly.

River gaped at him. "You ... what ... how?" she sputtered. She could see the truth of it in his face; he would always be the man who had destroyed his people, but now he had saved them too. Her heart leapt in joy for him, before plummeting as she thought through the implications. "You destroyed Gallifrey to stop the Time War and save the universe. _And you changed your mind?_ "

"There was another way," he soothed. "I went back and hid it in a pocket universe. Ended the Time War, just the same, without me committing fratricidal genocide. It looked like death, but it wasn't, like what we did at Lake Silencio."

River pressed a palm to her forehead. "That's a completely different example, and you know it," she gasped. "The destruction of Gallifrey is a fixed _anchor_ of the universe. The Big Bang, the End of Time, the Destruction of Gallifrey. Setting aside that you broke through the biggest time lock ever created, you also undid a fixed anchor of the universe!? Without destroying said universe? How?"

"I had thirteen versions of the Tardis, two millennia of calculations, one conscious superweapon, and 26 hands," he shrugged, his head still in her lap. "I wrapped them all around the universe and asked it to be still."

"You asked it to be still?" she asked incredulously. "And the universe listened? Does that happen a lot now?"

"Hardly ever," he said, gesturing ruefully to his still-healing body. "

That's ... possibly the most terrifying thing I've ever heard. What do the Time Lords think of you commanding the laws of time to your will?"

He frowned. "I didn't command them to my will. I asked them, nicely, with mathematics, if they wouldn't mind redefining themselves. Slightly. Why are you looking at me like that?" he said defensively. She arched a brow at him, and he sighed. "Fine. Yes, I concede the terrifying bit. I am every cautionary fairy tale ever told to frighten time-tots. I've been that for a long time. But to be honest, I don't know what the Time Lords think of it. I don't know where I put them."

River smirked as she toyed absently with his hair. "Okay, that sounds more like you." She frowned. "But if Gallifrey is still missing, where did the new regenerations come from?"

He sat up and collected his drink, taking a sip before slumping forward, elbows on knees as he turned the tumbler in his hands. "Right," he said softly, his gaze on the floor. "This is the part where I apologize to you for every horrible thing that happened in your childhood. Remember the cracks in the universe? There was one on Trenzalore. And the Time Lords reached through it with one question: ' _Doctor Who?_ " My name would have brought them home. Unfortunately, the message also drew in every race that ever hated the Time Lords, and answering the question would have reignited the Time War in that very instant."

"Oh, God," River murmured, with horrified understanding. "Silence must fall."

"That's what the church thought, anyway," the Doctor said, standing up to pace. "I stayed on Trenzalore, and spent the next 900 years fighting another war. And remaining _silent_ , incidentally."

"You were never going to answer that question," River said with a groan, recalling her lost and wasted childhood in the cruel hands of the Silence. "Those idiots. They didn't have to stop you."

"No. And I think it became apparent to the Time Lords that Trenzalore was neither the time nor place for their release. I don't know exactly what they knew, but they certainly knew I was dying." He sighed and sat beside her again. He took her hand and turned it palm up in his own. He gently traced the lines of her palm and the pads of her fingers. "I was dying, and my last friends were with me for the final defeat," he continued. "But the Time Lords were with me too, and defeat was not in their enlightened self-interest. They sent through my new regenerations, then closed the crack. And now they are lost again, trapped in another dimension." He slumped back into the cushions of the couch with a frown.

"Okay, just to recap," River said, holding up a finger. "First, the Time Lords are not dead."

"Nope."

"But you don't know where they are."

"Right."

"Or how to get them back."

"No."

"Or how to prevent the Time War from restarting when you do."

" _No_ ," he said, scowling.

"Or whether they will name you Lord President the next time they see you, or just execute you on the spot."

"They might do both," the Doctor said with a sigh. "That pretty well sums up my life right now."

"How long since you ... un-destroyed Gallifrey?" River probed.

The Doctor squinted at her. "That's actually an interesting question. I've already saved it twelve times, once in each of my lives. But since the one I can remember? A thousand years, give or take." River tilted her head at him and lifted an eyebrow. "I know, I know," he said defensively. "I thought I would have figured it out by now too."

"Now I understand the need for the possibly-unlimited regeneration cycle," River said with a laugh.

"It actually goes deeper than the Time Lords thinking I'm dense," the Doctor said softly. "I say that I've saved Gallifrey ... but I'm not finished. I had to have another regeneration cycle to save Gallifrey. The Tardis has been doing the calculations since the day I stole her, but she's not quite done yet. And there were thirteen of me there that day. Numbers one through twelve were all very chatty, because I always get that way when I'm showing off to myself. But old number thirteen here," he said, gesturing to himself, "didn't say a word. I'm hoping that means he'll be _paying attention to where he is stuffing the planet_ next time."

River could feel his great well of frustration and guilt. She caught his hand and gently tugged him back into her lap. He didn't fight her this time, and sighed when she ghosted her fingers over his face. "When will the Tardis be finished with the final calculations for Gallifrey?" she asked.

"Soon," he answered, his eyes closed.

"When she does, be sure to come get me," River said quietly. "You can finish saving Gallifrey. I'll watch to see where you put it."

He smiled at her, then lifted his hand and tucked her hair behind her ear before cupping her cheek, his eyes melancholy. Then, a shift in his gaze, his hand behind her neck, and he pulled her down until her forehead rested on his own. She waited for him while he breathed through the hitch of hesitation that was apparently instinctual in his new self.

"Sorry, sorry," he murmured against her lips.

"Let me," she whispered. She slowly moved her hands and lips over him, gentling him as his hearts fought with his body, guiding him past his own lingering pain and spiky defenses until he finally surrendered to her. New lips and hips and hands -- for both of them -- but the same old lovers, and they found their way.

Later, with her head on his good shoulder, she traced words of love onto his chest, careful of the still-fading bruises and scarred-over wounds. His clever hands, which had recently been everywhere, were slowly smoothing the dip of her spine and the curve of her breast. The moment wouldn't linger, she knew. As it still and ever was with him, she could feel his mind starting to move again, time and space coursing through his manic brain.

"What next, Professor Song?" he murmured.

She laughed, low and throaty, and snuggled her face into the crook of his neck. "You can take me to dinner, for starters."

She felt him smile. "I can do that," he said. "There is this new restaurant I found that is doing Thai-Pyroville fusion. The curry actually catches the plate on fire. The chef owes me a favor for helping him out with an octopus gang; I'm sure I could get us a table."

River sat up, straddling his hips. "You never change," she said, looking down at him in wonder. He was about to protest otherwise, so she leaned down and kissed him before he could speak. "Not in any of the ways that matter," she continued when they came back up for air. She hooked a leg over his and cuddled back into his shoulder, waiting for his derailed brain to catch up again.

"And after dinner, Professor? What do we do then?" he murmured. She gave him a lustful look, and he sighed. "River."

"I know what you meant," she said softly. "You could stay with me here on Luna."

"That's funny," he answered sadly. "I was about to say you could run away with me in the Tardis."

River pushed up on her elbows and looked down at him with a crooked smile. His gaze flitted away, so she took his face in her hands until he looked at her. "Doctor," she said, insistently. "You and I both have empty tombs behind us. I think, of everyone in the universe, you and I should be able to figure out how to _live_."

He looked up at her, his eyes warm with amusement and adoration. He pulled her back down beside him and wrapped an arm around her. "We're linear now, you know," he said, holding her tighter. "No more foreknowledge or spoilers. We'll have to work it out together."

"I have one more spoiler for you," River answered, tilting her head to press a kiss to his neck. "We'll be fabulous." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, that's the end of this one. That said, there are some places I'd like to take them, so it may not be the end after all.


End file.
